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Topic: ACME vs OMM (Read 36268 times)

Here's an attempt to compare and contrast the extremes in possible worldviews by degree of subjectivity. On the end most of you here at WWGHA? can easily recognize and see through is the overly subjective ACME. Anything Can Mean Everything. Like the ubiquitous manufacturer of cartoon products, ACME is Cargo Cult optimism. A naive belief, rooted in pareidolia/apophenia that the cosmos exists to provide one with whatever one wants, (so long as the recipient is worthy of said blessings).

This is Santa Claus, pure and uncomplicated. The universe is your vending machine, with all the universe's comforts and satisfactions available to you simply for the asking. A prayer, a sacrificial offering, some mumbo jumbo, and a bit of humble narcissism is the only coin required to nudge the supreme creator of existence into doing your bidding. God is your bitch . He loves you even though you mainly talk to him when you think you might want something from him. He's omniscient, but really he can't see through your transparent pretense of needy, fear-based petty egotism. He really favors you only because you're more deserving - you're special, you're saved. Your accidents happen for a reason. There are no coincidences.

ACME provides everything for free in a universe of cartoon consequences. It's Manichean bipolarity is all Road Runner and Coyote, with mindless Sarah Palin self-confidence effortlessly speeding passed the intellectual snares of the Wily One. She beep beeps and quotes Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding" while the coyote blows himself up again and again. He hates her freedom.

Switching over to the other side of the cosmology continuum, we find OMM. Only Matter Matters. This is the mantra of hard materialism. Meaningless and repetitive, the worldview of strict determinism leaves literally nothing to the imagination. We are the universe's bitch. Rooted in the strong teleology that the universe is devoid of strong teleology, the human subject is either an exceptional pocket of unknowable fuzziness in a knowable and highly ordered cosmic accident, or an unexceptional blob of deluded protoplasm which nonetheless is the sole source of the perception of order, beauty, thought, values, and purpose in a blind, unconscious universal machine, depending on which side of the argument needs support.

In the OMM cosmos we find black holes, singularities, superstrings, anti-matter, and quantum, which is really just probability bundles that express themselves as either particles or waves (even though those forms are mutually exclusive by most sane reckoning), depending on the observer, but sort of not really depending on the observer as it might seem. What we don't find is any sign of ourselves. We are the empty vessel of observation, the pristine and empirical anti-guru who has shed all human identity and mortality to bestow upon the foolish masses the crystal clarity of our unflinchingly, heroically defiant message of enlightenment. The Anti-Cogito: 'There is no proof of consciousness - you just think that you think, therefore you aren't. You have become none with Youniverse. OMM.

OMM is a worldview that draws it's boundless authority from evidence. Evidence which is produced by and for an audience that exists only to fulfill souped up mammalian evolutionary purposes - which are not purposes at all but a simple elaboration of one or two basic rules established at the dawn of timespacematterenergy. Rules that inevitably, randomly, or arbitrarily (but never purposefully) makes 10+7 equal Chlorine (if we are talking nucleated protons) or 400 + 300 = 'Red' if we are talking wavelengths of light.

Anything you may have noticed, like how something like water looks, sounds, smells, tastes, feels to the touch, feels to float or swim in...these things are 'simply' emergent properties that inevitably follow from H2O. It's all very simple when you reverse engineer it, but try to start from nothing and run the tape forward. How do you come up with a different spectrum of visible light? Where do you get a color from?

Personally, I have spent significant stretches of time pushing the envelope of both ends of the continuum, and see them as natural extremes which human consciousness is prone to. I feel like I have benefited over the years from exploring both sides, but that ultimately I find them to be symmetrically narcissistic - crutches to help us lean on one side of reality or the other without having to truly own the full reality of what we are as human beings.

The Cosmos is a word for order, and that's what it is. Some order is subjective, some is objective. Being that neither we, nor the universe we can contemplate can ever be completely objective or completely subjective, it seems to me that it is the polarities which are illusion and not one pole or the other.

In between the two poles, we may find a dynamic but anchored intersubjective worldview which honors the empirical realities without sacrificing the enchantment of the Cosmos and the Self. No Santa Claus, no Frankenstein, just real people, real world, real characters and destinies, with all their dream filled, deluded, long suffering dramas and revolutionary enlightenments.

God doesn't heal amputees, but neither does matter play baseball. Wake up. You are real. What you are reading isn't just pixels on your screen, or words from the dictionary, they are my thoughts that I'm choosing to articulate using whatever words I can manage to pull out of somewhere which can't be seen by any imaging device possible. I am the imaging device. Me alone. But this device doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's no more independent from matter as the words you read are independent of the characters they are made of, the browser you display it in, the routing protocols of the internet, etc.

Ultimately the neurological processes that produce this are no different from those of the rest of the Cosmos. If there is meaning in here, there is at least the capacity to manipulate, transport, and transmit meaning out there. The idea of a Cosmos that manages to evolve a trillion cell organism which is positively dripping with layers of meaning, order, and purpose of megasymphonic proportions without getting even a speck of it on itself is a little far fetched. All hundred billion galaxies over 13+ billion years and no consciousness whatsoever until Homo Sapiens sapiens in the last few minutes of geological time on this one tiny planet. Mmhmm. OMmm.

Matter, Meaning, Modulation, Moderation:

MMMM

I = 'Immediacracy' for here and now.Time: 5-18-2010 7:01 AM EDTObjective realities and Subjective truths are essentially connected but existentially completely separate.life and matter = existential relative expressions of essential dynamic cosmic principles.Voluntary, conscious, and selective identification.Able to respond with the full range of human attitudes.Healthy range and duration of moods.'Middle through' - supported by bottom, informed by topDeterminism and Freewill natural complements to each other.A bit of magical thinking and a bit of cynical empiricism go a long way.

« Last Edit: May 18, 2010, 06:42:06 AM by Immediacracy »

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Well, I absolutely am 100% OMM according to your definition. However, I don't see why a OMM person needs to be depressed, sociopathic nor apathic. Maybe some others here are because of their negative experience with religion and vague believes, maybe, but I am none of these things. I am very passionate about science, about sports, about my girlfriend and my friends. I am awed by science, the universe and its simple but effective mechanics. I am awed by life and amazed at the diversity and endless variations nature has come up with on just one single planet. But in my logics and my world view, I'm still 100% 'OMM'. Because it's the only thing that makes sense.

Your suggestion seems to suggest that 'ACME' is a viable alternative world-view and on par with OMM, I'm sure it seems to you that 'they are equal' and you are smart by taking 'the middle ground'. But it's not. You don't only get nowhere with 'ACME', it is also a direction that has only one reason of existence, people need to deal with reality in easy to understand terms, and they need some emotional thing to cling to for dealing with life, death and uncertainties. ACME is only a by product of fear and as such not a viable world view. Therefore, taking the 'middle ground' is nonsense as well.

Okay, let's start to debunk some of your anti-OMM points.

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It's all very simple when you reverse engineer it, but try to start from nothing and run the tape forward. How do you come up with a different spectrum of visible light? Where do you get a color from?

Yes, coming from nothing to current reality is improbable. <Analogy alert> Compare it with rolling dice a million times. If you review the exact combination that you threw is easy to explain when you reverse engineer it. But try to roll the dice again and you'll see, you get something entirely different.</Analogy alert>

A color is an interpretation of the brain of light of a certain wavelength. Apparently it is a good way to interpret light. Similarly a sound is interpretation of air density changes and smell and taste are interpretations of molecular structures.

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The Cosmos is a word for order, and that's what it is.

There is no order. Order is a human invention to grasp and interpret the world. The order in the cosmos is only the consequence of the basic behavior of the most elementary fabric of space-time on a large scale.

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but neither does matter play baseball

Baseball is based on physics of mass, force, inertia, etc. Humans evolved to like playing games, as playing games is a way to socialize, play games, and train your 'hand'-eye coordination and physical capacities which in the past were needed for hunting and survival. OMM is fine with baseball.

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What you are reading isn't just pixels on your screen, or words from the dictionary, they are my thoughts that I'm choosing to articulate using whatever words I can manage to pull out of somewhere which can't be seen by any imaging device possible. I am the imaging device.

You're wrong, it can be seen. What I read is combination of a lot of technical factors, which uses physics to allow us to communicate.

Even though most thoughts are certainly not unique, you as a person are. But of course, this doesn't mean there is some kind of magic, spirit, etc. Only that the combinations are endless.

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All hundred billion galaxies over 13+ billion years and no consciousness whatsoever until Homo Sapiens sapiens in the last few minutes of geological time on this one tiny planet.

We do not know that. We have no means yet to scan for lifeforms in the rest of the galaxy nor universe. The universe might be full of life. The SETI project is doing some research in that direction. But their premises is that aliens send out radio signals with the power of a star and they will use variations of the frequency of a hydrogen atom to communicate. Well, wherever aliens may exist and whatever they may be doing, in the small patch of sky SETI has researched thus far shows that is certainly not it. (And neither are we, or would we even be capable of such a thing until the far far future, nor may aliens find that the most convenient way of communicating with other species.)

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"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

Well, I absolutely am 100% OMM according to your definition. However, I don't see why a OMM person needs to be depressed, sociopathic nor apathic. Maybe some others here are because of their negative experience with religion and vague believes, maybe, but I am none of these things.

All these are due to some sort of disharmony between one and his environment. It may be quite hard to eliminate them naturally without conscious will.

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Your suggestion seems to suggest that 'ACME' is a viable alternative world-view and on par with OMM, I'm sure it seems to you that 'they are equal' and you are smart by taking 'the middle ground'. But it's not. You don't only get nowhere with 'ACME', it is also a direction that has only one reason of existence, people need to deal with reality in easy to understand terms, and they need some emotional thing to cling to for dealing with life, death and uncertainties. ACME is only a by product of fear and as such not a viable world view. Therefore, taking the 'middle ground' is nonsense as well.

Again this could be attributed to being introduced to God or religion at a time when the mind was not fully evolved to grasp it.

This has led to divergent views all based on inaccurate/insufficient information. This ACME is transient as it will be weathered down with reviews and acceptance of OMM. It could be viewed as a stage in the overall development.

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What if the future we hope for depends on yesterday? We only have now to live the life.

I don't see why a OMM person needs to be depressed, sociopathic nor apathic.

No, they don't at all. Neither does a person with an ACME worldview have to be clinically delusional, I'm just comparing that each extreme translates into if taken their logical end. You're not a depressed sociopath because you don't believe that your girlfriend is a stranger who is only exploiting a survival strategy and you don't believe that science and sports are the meaningless brain farts of an overgrown sponge.

I'm not saying it's bad to be extremely OMM, I'm just saying it's extreme. I want my bridge builders and polymer chemists to be all about OMM, and I would expect that they could live lives as full and rich as anyone else. I think that the negativity comes when a person actually tries to personally embody the truncated awareness of either worldview.

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Your suggestion seems to suggest that 'ACME' is a viable alternative world-view and on par with OMM, I'm sure it seems to you that 'they are equal' and you are smart by taking 'the middle ground'. But it's not.

I'm suggesting only symmetry and polarity and posit that they comprise our continnum of infra-teleology and ultra-teleonomy. I don't see myself as taking the middle ground but rather pointing to the potential of a middle ground and outlining it's hypothetical benefits.

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You don't only get nowhere with 'ACME', it is also a direction that has only one reason of existence, people need to deal with reality in easy to understand terms, and they need some emotional thing to cling to for dealing with life, death and uncertainties. ACME is only a by product of fear and as such not a viable world view.

Not sure what you mean by viable. ACME has been the default worldview for the Homo sapiens. Cultures all over the world have been getting along, for better or worse, with the ACME worldview, undoubtedly since before the dawn of civilization. I can you think of an example of a culture which cultivated an OMM worldview without first building an elaborate ACME. The OMM defensive posture relies on the ACME worldview being exclusively about superstition - that is, it prejudges and stereotypes it as being a one dimensional quantity - 0; an absence of a logical, objective worldview that becomes filled by superstition. It's a straw man caricature of the ACME, which can never contain anything but undesirable ego projections. Fear. Weakness. Sentimentality. Foolishness.

The OMM can never consider the possibility that ACME contains the wholly legitimate but raw essential subjectivity of the human psyche. It can allow no possibility that things like shamanism and divination might be anthropological universals for a reason, or that all science has it's roots in astrology and alchemy.

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Therefore, taking the 'middle ground' is nonsense as well.

That's what the OMM has to say. Same as ACME. True Belief/True Disbelief is mandated.

Okay, let's start to debunk some of your anti-OMM points.

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It's all very simple when you reverse engineer it, but try to start from nothing and run the tape forward. How do you come up with a different spectrum of visible light? Where do you get a color from?

Yes, coming from nothing to current reality is improbable. <Analogy alert> Compare it with rolling dice a million times. If you review the exact combination that you threw is easy to explain when you reverse engineer it. But try to roll the dice again and you'll see, you get something entirely different.</Analogy alert>

That presumes such things as dice, rolling, time, self-grouping, combination patterns. From a singularity you get nothing but a singularity unless you factor in metaphysical factors such as sequence, persistence, pattern, and novelty.

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A color is an interpretation of the brain of light of a certain wavelength. Apparently it is a good way to interpret light. Similarly a sound is interpretation of air density changes and smell and taste are interpretations of molecular structures.

No it's not. Brown, White, Pink, Grey have no wavelength. Like the pure hues that do correlate to (but in no way that we know of resemble) optical wavelengths, the perception of color is a tangible subjective phenomenon that contains no photons from outside of human skull. No photons are passed through the optic nerve to the visual cortex - no surgery of the cortex will show any color pigments present.

It really doesn't matter if perceptual qualia are goodways to interpret sensory data, so would time travel or telekinesis be convenient - but they simply aren't possible using physics alone. No physical mathematical equation can resolve to 'redness' any more than it could roll a numerical combination that means 'itchy' or 'cinnamon'. We can dream in color - no light there. It a blue ocean in a dream not blue?

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There is no order. Order is a human invention to grasp and interpret the world. The order in the cosmos is only the consequence of the basic behavior of the most elementary fabric of space-time on a large scale.

This is the height of OMM delusion. Interpret the world? What world? The world of utter chaos that has no order? Interpret how? Using the disorder that somehow turns into order despite not having any possible way to persist or cohere? Cosmos means order. If you say there is no order, you say there is no cosmos. Absurd.

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Baseball is based on physics of mass, force, inertia, etc. Humans evolved to like playing games, as playing games is a way to socialize, play games, and train your 'hand'-eye coordination and physical capacities which in the past were needed for hunting and survival. OMM is fine with baseball.

No, baseball is based on a ball, a bat, a field with a logical abstraction layer of articulated competition, and friends who agree to play the game and want to win. If the players don't want to win, if they don't imagine that they are playing the game together, then it's not a baseball game is it? It doesn't matter what the physics are, baseball requires conscious agents who believe in the game. In fact, you can play baseball on a computer. A game of Wii baseball, which exists only as illuminated pixels and digital memory, having no actual inertia, force, or mass is more of a baseball game than any disordered pile of sports equipment and human bodies standing in a field.

Matter has no need to play games or evolve to like playing games, or to conceive of a logos in which games are even a remote possibility.

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You're wrong, it can be seen. What I read is combination of a lot of technical factors, which uses physics to allow us to communicate.

Communicate what though? It's awesome that we are getting closer to being able to share more of our interior experience with each other, but that's nothing compared to the hard problem of consciousness. What you're talking about is just learning how the brain encodes and decodes, not how qualia and meaning actually come to be. Again, OMM flattening the subjective until it seems objective.

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Even though most thoughts are certainly not unique, you as a person are. But of course, this doesn't mean there is some kind of magic, spirit, etc. Only that the combinations are endless.

It's not magic, it's just pattern. Gestalt. Combinations aren't anything unless there's some possibility of one combination being different from another in a new way. That possibility must be built in, a priori, along with whatever system of memory is being invoked to remember which combinations have what outcome.

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We do not know that...

Seriously? That is hardcore OMM. You really think that order was invented by the human brain and exists nowhere else except in the brains of similar creatures? To me it's blazingly obvious that every particle in the Cosmos and every idea in anyone's head, human or alien, is order and that disorder is a kind of order and not the other way around. The fact that we don't say dis-chaos is a clue. Not to say there is some overarching order that everything is consciously aware of - just that the universe is both text and noise, not just noise that happened to roll itself into text right after accidentally granting itself the power to do that..right after inventing power, and granting, and accidents, and inventing.

I just don't see how anything can make sense out of a universe that doesn't already make sense.

« Last Edit: May 18, 2010, 09:34:46 AM by Immediacracy »

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

No, they don't at all. Neither does a person with an ACME worldview have to be clinically delusional.

So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

Are your clothes not real? Are they not subject to our opinions? Is your body not a reality which is under the control of your whims?

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On the other hand, our opinions can be fallible or subject to reviews all based on the dictates of the reality.

You still have to be the one to change your mind. Dictates of reality won't do it for you. No amount of evidence can dissuade the true believer.

If you set up a context where you value empirical, objective realities over subjective meanings then you can't pretend to be proving anything when you restate your axioms in a different way. Straw Man.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?

Not Clinically delusional. Everyone who believes that money has value is delusional, but we don't want to put antipsychotic drugs all over the ATMs.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?

Not Clinically delusional. Everyone who believes that money has value is delusional, but we don't want to put antipsychotic drugs all over the ATMs.

False analogy.

Value is a subjective definition of an aspect of the worth in a context.

Money has value in a context of an economy that uses money.

It is not comparable too,"So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?"

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

Value is a subjective definition of an aspect of the worth in a context.

Money has value in a context of an economy that uses money.

It is not comparable too,"So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?"

You said 'reality/existence' though. In 'reality', money 'exists' only as tokenized metal, paper and ink or digital ephemera. It's only value comes from the shared make believe of those participating in the money belief system. In a very similar way, theistic fictions have value in the context of a religious community or culture.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Value is a subjective definition of an aspect of the worth in a context.

Money has value in a context of an economy that uses money.

It is not comparable too,"So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?"

You said 'reality/existence' though. In 'reality', money 'exists' only as tokenized metal, paper and ink or digital ephemera. It's only value comes from the shared make believe of those participating in the money belief system. In a very similar way, theistic fictions have value in the context of a religious community or culture.

Your logic does not follow.

Money is in reference to a material objective in exchange for another material object, the idea is subjective but ideas are not 'things' so money is not treated as being 'evident in reality' as if it were a 'thing'.

Supernatural religious assertions DO NOT function the same way, they are not subjective ideals of material goods and are instead claims pertaining to reality as if they were absolutely true. They are made in a fashion that makes them inseparable from make believe, yet people claim to know absolutely.

So again:

So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

What you are reading isn't just pixels on your screen, or words from the dictionary, they are my thoughts that I'm choosing to articulate using whatever words I can manage to pull out of somewhere which can't be seen by any imaging device possible. I am the imaging device.

You're wrong, it can be seen. What I read is combination of a lot of technical factors, which uses physics to allow us to communicate.

Rethinking this, I do have sympathy for this perspective too. For most of my life I've been thinking about technology to record and playback consciousness, and I think that it is likely only a matter of time until we do this. What I wrote is not exactly this, as I was talking about imaging the place where consciousness finds its words, so an imaging device would have to predict what I might want to say before I want to say it. Not sure about the neurology of that. It seems a bit obscure.

But anyways, this is how y'all (sic) can know that I'm considering someone's point and am prepared to admit when I'm wr- wrr- wrong, when and if that should arise . In this case I do think that my point about the difference between the hard problem of consciousness and the easy problem does apply, and that the origins of creativity pose a potentially different problem for imaging technology than trying to observe other kinds of mental activity.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

I always know that ego is involved when people are compelled to open their comment with 'you are wrong'. You may not follow my logic, or you may observe that I'm not logical, but it's not empirically true that 'my logic does not follow' because you can't speak for logic in general.

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Money is in reference to a material objective in exchange for another material object, the idea is subjective but ideas are not 'things' so money is not treated as being 'evident in reality' as if it were a 'thing'.

Huh? Money is exchanged for all kinds of goods and services, some extremely esoteric and intangible (Papal indulgences come to mind). I don't really follow the rest.

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Supernatural religious assertions DO NOT function the same way, they are not subjective ideals of material goods and are instead claims pertaining to reality as if they were absolutely true. They are made in a fashion that makes them inseparable from make believe, yet people claim to know absolutely.

Well, since you say it in ALL CAPS then it must be the supreme truth . I don't see that there is any meaningful difference between the beliefs propagated by a multi-level marketing organization like Amway (oh, Quixtar) and a religious cult. Amway is truly the ACME of ACME, but without any specific theist claims (only that you'll be rich RICH!..if you work hard.).

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So again:

So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?

Since you say 'again', that must mean that you are 'winning', right?

Again and again, the word delusional is just a word. Making claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe is also called sales, marketing, lying, public relations, press releases, tabloid journalism. If you don't know that your claims are imaginary then you could be deluded, naive, or just hopeful. Clinically delusional is something quite a bit different. In that case a person is generally hospitalized because they are unable to safely navigate our society because their subjective orientation is radically mismatched to conventional intersubjective sensibilities. Religion may have the same roots as mental illness, but most religious people aren't literally psychotic.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

I always know that ego is involved when people are compelled to open their comment with 'you are wrong'. You may not follow my logic, or you may observe that I'm not logical, but it's not empirically true that 'my logic does not follow' because you can't speak for logic in general.

Actually, I can.

Logic is simply the tool used to examine the statement or claims.

Your claims are not internally consisted in the form of the analogy you made as well as the conclusion you drew. This is often referred to as a non-sequitir, or spelled out in plain english,"You're logic does not follow".

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Money is in reference to a material objective in exchange for another material object, the idea is subjective but ideas are not 'things' so money is not treated as being 'evident in reality' as if it were a 'thing'.

Huh? Money is exchanged for all kinds of goods and services, some extremely esoteric and intangible (Papal indulgences come to mind). I don't really follow the rest.

And this is what exactly?

Ideas are still not things and your analogy still does not hold.

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Supernatural religious assertions DO NOT function the same way, they are not subjective ideals of material goods and are instead claims pertaining to reality as if they were absolutely true. They are made in a fashion that makes them inseparable from make believe, yet people claim to know absolutely.

Well, since you say it in ALL CAPS then it must be the supreme truth . I don't see that there is any meaningful difference between the beliefs propagated by a multi-level marketing organization like Amway (oh, Quixtar) and a religious cult. Amway is truly the ACME of ACME, but without any specific theist claims (only that you'll be rich RICH!..if you work hard.).

I struck through the ignorant ad hominem.

Again, what is this in response too? How does this fix your earlier analogy?

Are you acknowledging that the earlier analogy is incorrect?

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So again:

So it is not delusional to make claims as if they pertain to reality/existence that are entirely inseparable from make believe?

Since you say 'again', that must mean that you are 'winning', right?

Religion may have the same roots as mental illness, but most religious people aren't literally psychotic.

Excellent, you have to agree that at some level religious claims are necessarily delusional. Plus, I never said they were psychotic or delusional, I simply asked you a question and allowed you to answer it for yourself in a way that reached the point I was reaching for.

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

Are you affiliated with Unity? Your ideas seem familiar to me from my experience with that church. Also, you used a term (in another thread, I think) 'ground of all being' is a term Shelby Spong uses a lot when he is visiting Unity here in Austin, Texas

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Truthfinder:the birds adapt and change through million of years in order to survive ,is that science, then cats should evolve also wings to better catch the birdsMailbag:On a side note, back in college before my conversion, I actually saw a demon sitting next to me in critical thinking class.

"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

Making a choice between options with that choice being neither determinate nor random.

[Indeterminate covers both randomness + choice]

lol Nice attempt at a dodge.

If its neither determinate nor random, then what is it?

How is it inseparable from being purely random?

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

You're not a depressed sociopath because you don't believe that your girlfriend is a stranger who is only exploiting a survival strategy and you don't believe that science and sports are the meaningless brain farts of an overgrown sponge.

Well, I do. I know that my girlfriend is looking for a mate driven by biology because of reproduction instincts. And I do believe that sports are used to improve our coordination, physique and social interaction. And we have science and curiosity because knowledge of the world can lead to tool usage which improves our survival chances. But even though I know all this, it doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. It doesn't change how I feel about those things at all, just more conscious about the underlying processes.

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ACME has been the default worldview for the Homo sapiens. Cultures all over the world have been getting along, for better or worse, with the ACME worldview, undoubtedly since before the dawn of civilization.

The combination of ignorance and curiosity leads to a strange worldview yes, and you can live with such a worldview. Luckily structured research has brought progress. Now we can understand large parts of nature and reject the naive ACME fiction. The only reason many people still embrace ACME-like world views is that they don't like the outcome of the research and for some reason feel rational thinking is 'cold', while it really doesn't need to be.

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The OMM can never consider the possibility that ACME contains the wholly legitimate but raw essential subjectivity of the human psyche. It can allow no possibility that things like shamanism and divination might be anthropological universals for a reason, or that all science has it's roots in astrology and alchemy.

As I said, shamanism and thing like it are caused by the combination of ignorance and curiosity and the will to know the workings of nature. Astrology and alchemy were substitutes for science as they pretended to know things about nature. People, including some very great minds, were attracted by mysticism of these pseudo-sciences and also felt the effect of indoctrination. Science started within ignorance and pseudo-sciences, which blocked the development of real science for rather long. I am very happy that some of the greatest minds slowly broke through and got us with the scientific methods as we see them today.

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That's what the OMM has to say. Same as ACME. True Belief/True Disbelief is mandated.

Obvious nonsense. OMM is no belief, but a structured approach to the universe without preconceptions. ACME contains things like religion. Disbelief in religion is not mandated, as you could know residing on these forums.

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That presumes such things as dice, rolling, time, self-grouping, combination patterns. From a singularity you get nothing but a singularity unless you factor in metaphysical factors such as sequence, persistence, pattern, and novelty.

Are you now referring (singularity) that we don't know what the preconditions were that let the BB explode? Well, we don't. So the forces of nature in the singularity that exploded into the BB apparently is different from the black holes we know of. This doesn't mean we need 'metaphysical factors'.

If we role a dice, we just apply a force on it, and the resulting forces that decelerate the dice will make it stop at some point. Because a small change in factors gives other outcomes we consider the outcome random. If we repeat this process this doesn't mean anything to nature, only this same interaction between forces will occur. It is us human that model patterns from this process. If we record the outcome of the process over again we can make a mental model and apply grouping techniques of whatever mathematical constructs you like. We take a set of processes in nature, in this case a piece of matter, a measurement of the dimensions of space-time, and forces we apply, and we use mental modeling to abstractly apply structure to this set of phenomena.

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No it's not. Brown, White, Pink, Grey have no wavelength.

They are our interpretation of the joint processing of a group of photons with different wavelenghts. There is nothing subjective about it, every human can objectively determine a color to be Brown, White, Pink or Grey. Photoshop can do the same, objective, trick.

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Like the pure hues that do correlate to (but in no way that we know of resemble) optical wavelengths, the perception of color is a tangible subjective phenomenon that contains no photons from outside of human skull. No photons are passed through the optic nerve to the visual cortex - no surgery of the cortex will show any color pigments present.

No the photons stimulate areas in the eye that give electrical signals to the brain. It are these signals that are interpreted.

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No physical mathematical equation can resolve to 'redness' any more than it could roll a numerical combination that means 'itchy' or 'cinnamon'. We can dream in color - no light there. It a blue ocean in a dream not blue?

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No, a dream about a blue ocean is simply remembering the electrical stimulant the color blue gave you. Dreaming or fantasizing allows you to repeat the firing of the same neural pathway the real thing did. There is nothing really blue in your dream or mind.

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This is the height of OMM delusion. Interpret the world? What world? The world of utter chaos that has no order? Interpret how? Using the disorder that somehow turns into order despite not having any possible way to persist or cohere? Cosmos means order. If you say there is no order, you say there is no cosmos. Absurd.

There is a set of physical processes, namely an interplay between space/time, matter/energy and forces, that together display a certain behavior. Then there is the human construct of order. We overlay the universe with our human desire for order in order to study 'objects' in isolation. We do so to look at the universe and group specific combinations of space/time,matter/energy and forces.

If we see a patch of space/time, in which a large amount of matter clumped together because of gravity we could for instance call it a 'planet'. The fact that we lately redefined 'planet' so that Pluto, a former planet, now is regrouped and branded as a dwarf planet doesn't change one tiny bit about what Pluto really is. It only changes our human need to order the universe.

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No, baseball is based on a ball, a bat, a field with a logical abstraction layer of articulated competition, and friends who agree to play the game and want to win. If the players don't want to win, if they don't imagine that they are playing the game together, then it's not a baseball game is it? It doesn't matter what the physics are, baseball requires conscious agents who believe in the game. In fact, you can play baseball on a computer. A game of Wii baseball, which exists only as illuminated pixels and digital memory, having no actual inertia, force, or mass is more of a baseball game than any disordered pile of sports equipment and human bodies standing in a field.

You don't have to believe anything and you don't contradict my 'OMM' view of baseball. We agree to a set of rules, because it simplifies comparison and competition. We like baseball, because it stimulates our evolutionary need to practice hand-eye coordination, competition, strengthening, etc, for hunting, combat, survival. Wii baseball only resembles baseball by applying the same rules to a set of pixels. It takes our physical needs, but the rest stays the same. You don't need your ACME stuff to understand it.

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Matter has no need to play games or evolve to like playing games, or to conceive of a logos in which games are even a remote possibility.

Well, we did evolve like that. There are several mammals that play. Apparently it improves survival rates.

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Communicate what though? It's awesome that we are getting closer to being able to share more of our interior experience with each other, but that's nothing compared to the hard problem of consciousness. What you're talking about is just learning how the brain encodes and decodes, not how qualia and meaning actually come to be. Again, OMM flattening the subjective until it seems objective.

OMM doesn't flatten anything. It just better understands the deeper mechanics behind brain functioning and consciousness, etc. I am sorry for you that you lose your 'magical feelings' in this way about thinking.

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It's not magic, it's just pattern. Gestalt. Combinations aren't anything unless there's some possibility of one combination being different from another in a new way. That possibility must be built in, a priori, along with whatever system of memory is being invoked to remember which combinations have what outcome.

I don't understand what you're trying to say. That we have built in processes in our brain? That's right. Again a great evolutionary feat. That combinations are different from each other? That's right. That's why you see babies making random movements to pursue some goal. When they fail they try again. When they succeed, the winning combination is 'burned' into their brain.

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Seriously? That is hardcore OMM. You really think that order was invented by the human brain and exists nowhere else except in the brains of similar creatures? To me it's blazingly obvious that every particle in the Cosmos and every idea in anyone's head, human or alien, is order and that disorder is a kind of order and not the other way around. The fact that we don't say dis-chaos is a clue. Not to say there is some overarching order that everything is consciously aware of - just that the universe is both text and noise, not just noise that happened to roll itself into text right after accidentally granting itself the power to do that..right after inventing power, and granting, and accidents, and inventing.

Yes, order is something we perceive. As I said, the universe only exists of space/time, matter/energy and forces. When we find a collection of matter in a piece of space/time that is clumped together and if we see clear boundaries to that matter, we like calling it an object and see it as a separate entity.

Its like when you see a cloud. You can see all kinds of patterns. It might seem like a house, or a boat, because we similar properties between the shape of the cloud and our mental models of those objects. But what we really see in the end is just a bunch of water molecules that clump together. And whatever pattern we might want to apply to that cloud, it doesn't change anything about the cloud itself.

In the end the universe is what it is and nothing more. Math, patterns and the English language are eventually only human constructs to describe what we see in the universe.

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"Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal."

Are you affiliated with Unity? Your ideas seem familiar to me from my experience with that church. Also, you used a term (in another thread, I think) 'ground of all being' is a term Shelby Spong uses a lot when he is visiting Unity here in Austin, Texas

Nah, I've never been affiliated with any church. I have seen some Unity stuff though. Seems decent if you like that kind of thing.

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"That which we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes–no questions and the registering of equipment-evoked responses; in short, that all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and that this is a participatory universe."- John Archibald Wheeler

Making a choice between options with that choice being neither determinate nor random.

[Indeterminate covers both randomness + choice]

lol Nice attempt at a dodge.

If its neither determinate nor random, then what is it?

How is it inseparable from being purely random?

Why are determinate and random the only options available ? This conversation - is it determinate or random ? Neither. It is chosen.

And chosen is.. what? how?

How is determinism not capable of providing a system that makes choices?

Just like the previous thread you abandoned, you use 'free will' as if 'free will' were totally in isolation in explanation from 'determinism'. You then proceed to completely ignore that 'free will' as you describe it is completely inseparable from randon chance.. yet in this thread you pretend as if you can instantly discard it being 'random'.

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

Why are determinate and random the only options available ? This conversation - is it determinate or random ? Neither. It is chosen.

And chosen is.. what? how?

How is determinism not capable of providing a system that makes choices?

Just like the previous thread you abandoned, you use 'free will' as if 'free will' were totally in isolation in explanation from 'determinism'. You then proceed to completely ignore that 'free will' as you describe it is completely inseparable from randon chance.. yet in this thread you pretend as if you can instantly discard it being 'random'.

Can you state your position ? Is this conversation determinate or random or a combination ?

Is this conversation like evolution, with random mutations of thought/typing being controlled/limited by the 'natural selection' of deterministic universal laws ?

Can you state your position ? Is this conversation determinate or random or a combination ?

Is this conversation like evolution, with random mutations of thought/typing being controlled/limited by the 'natural selection' of deterministic universal laws ?

Give me a clue as to your thinking ?

What does my position have to do with your inability to give a straight answer to a question?

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"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me

"Religious faith is the antithesis to knowledge, it is the opposition to education, and it has to act in animosity against the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because those things are what cause harm to a religions place in society most." - Me